Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) is the successor of Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4). IPv6 differs from IPv4 in many aspects. For example, Internet Protocol (IP) addresses are 128 bits long in IPv6 and 32 bits long in IPv4. IPv6 also provides improved support for extension and option headers and provides extensions to support authentication, data integrity, and confidentiality, etc.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,478,173 by Matthew Delco (hereinafter Delco) entitled “Method and System for Sharing a Network Connection in a Virtual Computer System” describes methods and systems of sending and receiving IPv4 packets to and from virtual machines. The Delco patent further describes methods for replacing layer 2 addresses of virtual machine network interface cards (vNIC) by layer 2 addresses of physical network interface cards (pNIC) in an IPv4 context. However, the methods describes in the Delco patent are not sufficient to yield desired results in an IPv6 environment.